


And Now We Lie In it

by sequence_fairy



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Accidental Stimulation, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sharing a Bed, These are not short, Write some short prompt fics I said, i am a liar, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 10:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20406391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: “Anyone here with us, right now?” He’d asked, voice only a little thready.The house had remained silent as the grave around them.Now though, they’re two floors up and staring down at the ‘bed’ the landowner had said would be there.“Well, there’s no way we both fit,” Ryan says, frowning.“Maybe if we snuggled up real tight?” Shane says, nudging Ryan.Ryan and Shane: Sharing a bed, sharing a morning, sharing a meeting room.





	And Now We Lie In it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kika988](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kika988/gifts).

> Took some prompts, told myself I'd keep them short, fucking lied. 
> 
> Thanks to [Jenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mukemagic) for looking this over.

Sometimes, when they stay at these places out in Middle of Nowhere, Rural America, the rooms are small enough that Shane can almost touch the walls on either side with his arms stretched out. This place is not like that. It’s a sprawling, almost-Victorian manor house, complete with 15 foot ceilings on the ground floor and a frankly cavernous attic on the third. 

The house has been everything from a single-family home in its original state, a rooming house for decades after that and now it sits, mostly abandoned except for the occasional Hallowe’en event. It’s beautiful, in a sort of decrepit kind of way. Most of the windows have been boarded up, and as they wandered through it, they’d seen evidence of squatters and animals. The bones are still sturdy though, and when they’d walked out of the east wing of the house and into the centre hallway, they’d both had to stop to marvel at the sheer magnificence of the central stairway. 

“You know,” Ryan had said, conversational, “in 1954, one of the tenants of the rooming house died on this staircase.” 

“Oh?” Shane had said, swinging the beam of his flashlight towards the stairs. 

“Yeah. Details are sketchy, but there’s a bunch of stories that say she was pushed.”

“Pushed? Like, by a person?” 

“There’s no record of the investigation or anything,” Ryan had hedged, turning to Shane. The beam of his headlamp blinds Shane briefly. “Coulda been a person, coulda been something else.” Ryan lets this little detail hang ominously in the air between them. 

“Something else, eh?” Shane had asked, turning his flashlight up towards the ceiling. Crown moldings and old plaster and cobwebs. He had turned to look down at Ryan, watching his friend. Ryan’s hands had been flexing reflexively around his flashlight. His eyes were wide. Shane had taken a breath, but Ryan had beat him to it. 

“Anyone here with us, right now?” He’d asked, voice only a little thready. 

The house had remained silent as the grave around them. 

Now though, they’re two floors up and staring down at the ‘bed’ the landowner had said would be there. 

“Well, there’s no way we both fit,” Ryan says, frowning.

“Maybe if we snuggled up real tight?” Shane says, nudging Ryan. 

“Snuggling you would be like holding a bag of coat hangers,” Ryan retorts, stepping to the side to get out of the way of Shane’s longer reach. He gestures to Shane. “You’re like, all elbows and knees.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s no picnic to curl up around you either,” Shane says, “what with the whole zero percent body fat thing. Must be like trying to hug a transformer.”

Ryan snorts, trying to fight back his grin and failing. Shane can feel his own growing on his face.

They sort out the sleeping arrangements. Ryan vetoes Shane’s suggestion that Shane just take the floor, so Shane slides in after Ryan, who wants to sleep next to the wall. Shane’s not sure if this is better or worse than being on the side of the bed that is open to the rest of the attic, but once Ryan’s mind is made up, it’s hard to get him to change it. Shane settles beside Ryan on his back, and Ryan rolls onto his side, facing away from Shane, curling into himself the way he always does. 

Shane spares Ryan a look in the gloom of the attic, moonlight barely filtering in through the line of narrow windows that line the front of the house just beneath the eaves. Ryan’s shoulders are tense. Shane can hear him breathing, can practically hear him counting them off in his head; in for four, out for four. Ryan will get next to no sleep, and this close, with the anxiety pouring off Ryan like a river, Shane probably won’t get any either. He closes his eyes anyway, hoping that maybe he’ll get lucky and catch a couple of hours before Ryan wakes him up when the house makes a noise. 

It takes almost no time at all for Shane to be proven right. 

“Shane!” Ryan hisses. Shane opens his eyes and looks up at the shadowed ceiling. Beside him, Ryan is so tense he’s shaking. “Did you hear that?” Ryan’s voice is barely above a whisper. 

Shane considers his response for long enough that Ryan pokes him with one finger. 

“I’m sleeping,” Shane says, pitching his own voice low to meet Ryan’s. 

“There were footsteps,” Ryan says, “I swear to God.” 

“Ryan, man, this is like, an ancient house. How many times do I gotta explain that houses settle to you?” 

Ryan huffs. Shane thinks maybe that’s the end of it. He blames his own poor luck when the house decides at that moment to provide them with a series of creaks in sucession that, if someone was in the throes of apophenia like Ryan is, could be construed as footsteps. Ryan stiffens. A vise grabs Shane around the wrist and he tugs against the grip, startled by the touch. Instead of loosening, it tightens. Belatedly, Shane realises it’s Ryan’s hand. 

“Do you hear that?” Ryan asks. Shane knows if he turned his head, Ryan’s eyes will be as big as saucers and that if they weren’t in the dark, he’d see sweat standing out against Ryan’s brow.

“Floorboards creak, Ryan,” Shane says. Ryan’s fingers are still clamped down around Shane’s wrist. 

“That’s footsteps,  _ Shane _ ,” Ryan says, leaning into Shane’s name. 

“It’s not,” Shane argues. “Will you let go of my arm?” 

Ryan lets him go like dropping a hot potato. 

Shane shifts, taking his arm back and lifting it up so he can rest his head on his palm. The beanie he’s wearing makes his scalp feel prickly, but it’s cold up here and Shane doesn’t want to take it off and lose all the warmth around his ears. He rubs his head against his palm instead, feeling the shift of his hair underneath the hat. Beside him, Ryan’s doing deep breathing exercises. Across the room, their static night vision cam stares at them, its steady, red eye unblinking. 

Shane stares up at the ceiling. He has no idea what time it is, and doesn’t want to find out.

Ryan shifts next to him, resettling himself. Shane turns his head in time to catch Ryan rolling onto his side, facing away. Shane closes his eyes. Ryan breathes out, long and slow. Shane falls asleep in the middle of one of Ryan’s breaths.

– – – 

Shane’s warm, it’s nice. There’s a weight across his stomach, and the press of a body against his side. It’s been a long time since Shane shared a bed with someone, and in this quiet moment before his brain comes fully online, he gives himself permission to enjoy it. He can feel the rise and fall of their breath, and the heat of their skin against his. 

One leg is thrown over Shane’s thigh, trapping him against the mattress. The hand on his stomach tenses and then relaxes, fingertips brushing against Shane’s bare skin where his shirt’s ridden up. It feels nice. Shane turns his head, hoping to get a feel of soft hair or the scent of shampoo, and instead gets a mouthful of Ryan’s hair. 

With that realisation comes a whole host of other ones. 

The whole length of Ryan is pressed all the way up against Shane, wrapped around him like an octopus. That’s Ryan’s hand on Shane’s stomach, fingers spread and just a breath away from discovering that Shane’s wearing the best morning wood he’s had in ages. Ryan’s face is smooshed into Shane’s shoulder, which is why when Shane turned his head, he got a mouthful of Ryan’s hair. 

That’s Ryan’s leg slung over Shane’s thigh. Shane sucks in a breath, quick and sharp. Ryan doesn’t move, except to bury his face more thoroughly into Shane’s arm. This is not great. There’s no way he can get out from under Ryan without waking him up.

As if the thought of him has the power to spur Ryan on, Ryan moves. Shane’s not sure what he’d call the movement, maybe an undulation, but whatever it is, it brings Shane up entirely short because that’s something new pressed up against his hip. It takes Shane probably longer than it should to realise what it is.

That’s Ryan’s dick against Shane’s hip. Ryan’s hard dick. 

Shane should say something. He should wake Ryan up. He should not lie here, paralysed by the fact that Ryan is apparently a cuddler who sleepily took the opportunity that was presented to him. 

Ryan’s hips move again, and this time, the movement is accompanied by a huff of breath.

Shane freezes. Is Ryan awake? The next several seconds pass by on a crawl. Shane is acutely aware of all the places Ryan is touching him. Ryan’s hand on his stomach has gone from soothing weight to looming pressure. What if Ryan realises Shane’s awake? What if Ryan’s awake and thinks Shane is asleep? What if neither of them are asleep? Shane’s exhale whistles through his teeth. He can’t deal with this. Not right now. 

They’ve never quite been this close to throwing themselves over the edge before. There was that time in a bar in New Mexico, when Ryan had had about three too many shots of tequila and had gotten handsy in the elevator but Shane had laughed it off, sent Ryan down the hall to his own room, and they’d never said anything else about it since. 

Shane lifts his head slightly, checking for the steady red light of the camera on the other side of the room. If he doesn’t wake Ryan up, Ryan’s going to find out anyway, but at least, no one else will know. Ryan shifts against Shane’s side. A thrill rolls up Shane’s spine as Ryan grinds into his hip. Shane remains perfectly still but warmth blooms through his veins, and want drops the bottom of his stomach to his knees. 

Shane lets his head fall back onto the pillow, fisting his hand in the sheets beside his own hip. Ryan has to be asleep, there’s no way he’s awake. 

“Mmf–s’it morning?” Ryan asks, voice sleep-rough and warm. Shane turns to look at where Ryan’s face is still pushed into Shane’s shoulder. Ryan lifts his head, catching Shane’s eyes. Ryan’s are still sleepily unfocused. Shane watches in real time as Ryan realises where he is and how close they are. Ryan’s eyes widen, then he winces. 

“Yeah, dude,” Shane answers, as Ryan takes his hand back and rolls away from Shane, onto his back. Shane wants to follow Ryan over, roll up onto his hands and knees over Ryan, stare down at him, all sleep-mussed and soft, and– 

“Sorry,” Ryan says, interrupting Shane’s train of thought. 

“It’s fine,” Shane says, because it has to be. Beside him, Ryan sighs and reaches up to scrub a hand down his face. 

They both lie there, silent. Shane knows why he hasn’t gotten up yet, and he knows, too, why Ryan hasn’t gotten up yet either. Just because they’re gonna scrap all the footage since the light crept into the room, doesn’t mean Ryan wants to have video evidence of the result of their having woken up entangled. Shane thinks about math problems he remembers from the lone finance class he’d taken during his undergrad, thinks about Severus Snape in a pink dress, thinks about Ryan’s face, eyes heated, mouth curved in a wicked grin– 

Nope. 

Not helping. Not one solitary iota. 

Shane slides out of bed first, takes a wide circling path around to their camera and turns it off. 

“Okay,” he says, “I’m gonna go change.” Shane points behind himself with his thumb and doesn’t wait for Ryan to answer before grabbing his whole bag and fleeing. 

By the time the rest of the crew has come back, any awkwardness has evaporated into their regular back and forth and Shane’s determination that this will not be A Thing. He thinks he does a good job, all things considered, because Ryan only stiffens for the briefest of seconds when Shane claps him on the shoulder as he’s walking by while loading the car.

It’s not until they’re back in LA, and Ryan is reviewing the footage that it becomes the thing Shane was hoping to avoid it becoming.

It goes like this: 

Shane drops himself into his chair beside Ryan at their desks and Ryan jumps out of his skin, barely stifling a scream with the back of his hand and pressing the other one to the centre of his chest. 

“Bit jumpy today, aren’t we?” Shane asks, turning in his chair to face Ryan. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of what Ryan’s working on. It’s the footage from their last sleepover. 

Ryan yanks his headphones out of his ears and glares at Shane, but it’s just a shade too fond for Shane to feel anything other than warm about it. 

“You wanna hear something?” Ryan asks. 

Ever dutiful, Shane nods. Ryan hands him his headphones. Shane sticks them into his ears, and Ryan hits play. The sound file is filled with a roar of white noise, until the telltale creaks break the monotony. Ryan lets it go long enough that Shane gets to hear Ryan’s first reactive whisper but Shane pulls out the earbuds before hearing anything else. 

“Well?” Ryan asks, clearly convinced by the noise on the tape. 

“I dunno,” Shane hedges because he’s never convinced and this isn’t convincing either, but he doesn’t really want to rain on Ryan’s parade this early in the day. It’s only half nine, and they haven’t even wandered into the big kitchen upstairs to see if there’s any snacks to be had. 

Ryan’s brows come down as he frowns. “You really would need a ghost to dropkick you in the face to be convinced, wouldn’t you?” 

The remark startles a laugh out of Shane. “Yeah, probably,” he agrees, turning toward his own monitor and poking his mouse to wake up his sleeping laptop. His email inbox is a rainbow of colours and urgency levels. The grind never ends. 

“Are you this in need of convincing about other stuff?” Ryan wonders, but it’s quiet enough that Shane isn’t sure he’s supposed to have heard. Ryan’s staring at his laptop screen, the footage pulled down off his bigger monitor in a move Shane is sure has to do with not broadcasting what he’s looking at to the whole office. 

Shane should know, before he looks over, what he’s going to find there on Ryan’s screen. It looks even more intimate from the outside perspective of the camera, and Shane had felt like it was plenty intimate lying there next to Ryan. It looks easy and comfortable and like something they do all the time, like this was inevitable. Ryan’s fast-forwarding but he stops when he notices that the Shane on the screen has woken up. 

When Ryan turns away from the screen, Shane realises how much he’s been leaning over because Ryan’s face is all of a sudden very close. There’s a moment of silence between them before Ryan blinks, and slams his laptop shut. He stands, grabs Shane’s arm and they are almost to one of the unoccupied meeting rooms on their floor before Shane even realises they’ve moved. 

“Wha–hey, Ryan! What are you–?” Shane cuts himself off when Ryan pulls them through the meeting room door and shuts it behind them. Ryan drops his laptop onto the table in the centre of the room, hard enough that the phone bridge in the centre rattles against the tabletop. 

“How long were you awake?” Ryan asks, taking a step towards Shane, who backs up in kind. Shane swallows. He knows they can both hear the click of his throat as he does. 

“I dunno,” Shane says eventually, words tangled in his mouth. “Not long? I don’t think. I didn’t look at the clock? Just … woke up like–woke up like that.” Shane gestures at Ryan’s closed laptop. “And anyway,” he says, because he’s on the defensive, “you were the one all cuddled up against me, Mr. Snuggling-you-is-like-holding-a-bag-of-coat-hangers.” 

“It wasn’t,” Ryan says, voice low and eyes downcast.

“Sorry, what?” Shane says, gobsmacked. He probably looks like he’s been punched, he certainly feels like it. 

“You don’t,” Ryan says, lifting his chin and looking Shane in the eyes. “You don’t feel like a bag of coat hangers.” 

“Oh,” Shane says, faint, “well, thank you? I guess?” 

Ryan steps back. He lifts a hand to the back of his neck, the way he does when he’s nervous or embarrassed. Another impasse. Shane is tired of these already. 

“Look,” he says, spreading his hands in front of himself. “It’s fine. Nothing happened. Sometimes, people who share a bed sleep close together. It doesn’t have to be anything.”

Shane wants to get out of this with dignity intact. He’s trying very hard to look both non-threatening and nonchalant about the whole thing. Which is probably why he mostly misses what Ryan says next. 

“Sorry,” Shane interrupts, because Ryan’s still talking and Shane is sure he only half-heard what Ryan was saying and that what he heard can’t be right. “What was that?” 

“Maybe I want it to be something,” Ryan says, words tripping over themselves on their way out of his mouth. He’s looking up at Shane, eyes wide and dark.

All of the air goes out of the room. 

For the second time in ten minutes, Shane is completely floored. He opens his mouth to say something, to say anything, but nothing comes out. He tries again and still nothing. 

“Shane?” Ryan asks. Nerves alight in the tightness around Ryan’s jaw.

“Shit,” Shane says finally, in a rush of breath. He lifts a hand to shove it through his hair. “Ryan, I–” 

“It’s fine,” Ryan says, something shuttering in his face. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

This is not at all going the right way, Shane is certain. Ryan turns away, reaching down to pick up his laptop. 

“I’ll let you know when the footage is ready,” Ryan says, and then he’s sliding past Shane to get to the door, keeping a careful distance between them.

“Wait,” Shane says, just as Ryan is reaching for the door knob. Shane’s moving before he can think, hands reaching out, taking Ryan by the shoulders, fingers sinking into the knit of Ryan’s sweater. “Just–let me finish, okay?” 

Ryan nods, but he’s still holding his laptop up between them like it’s a barrier against what might be coming. 

“I don’t want it to be nothing–” 

“But you just said–” 

“I know what I said,” Shane says. He exhales. Now or never, Madej. “I said that because I didn’t want you to feel like, obligated? Or something.”

Ryan scoffs. “Dude, I don’t. I couldn’t. I–Jesus, Shane, I– ‘ Ryan’s face tilts up, and for a moment, in Ryan’s eyes, Shane thinks he might see the answer to the universe. 

Ryan’s gaze darts to where Shane’s licking his lips and then back up to meet Shane’s eyes. Shane’s pulse thunders in his ears. They’re close enough that Shane can feel the huff of Ryan’s breath, close enough that Shane can see the way Ryan’s eyes aren’t all one shade of brown. Close enough that when Ryan’s eyes close, Shane can see the fan of his eyelashes like soot against his cheek. 

The press of Ryan’s mouth against his is still a surprise, for all that Ryan’s been telegraphing it like a boxer faking out his opponent, and Shane’s brain takes a long second to catch up with what is happening. When he does, Ryan makes a surprised sound against Shane’s mouth and rocks back a step. The kiss breaks, but Ryan doesn’t pull away properly, just breathes into the inch of space separating them. Shane closes the distance between them this time, one hand coming up to hold the back of Ryan’s head, fingers speared through Ryan’s hair. 

When they break apart after a long moment, Shane doesn’t drop his hand. “You don’t feel like a transformer,” Shane says, and watches as Ryan’s smile dawns across his face. 

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan says, stepping back enough that Shane has to let his hand drop. Shane grins at him, in a way that he knows is goofy and stupid, but he can’t be arsed to care. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please come and chat with me about my fic on [tumblr](http://sequencefairy.tumblr.com) or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/warpspeed_chic).


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